Adventures: walking, travel, PhD research experiences

Camino de Santiago Days 1 and 2

Train from Barcelona through cornfields and sunflowers ready for harvest. Flinty looking soil, lots of vegie gardens with ripe tomatoes.

Arrive at Roncesvalles with a busload of new pilgrims from Pamplona and am efficiently herded into an office to fill out a form to get the credential, and issued accommodation. The administration is being done by German Girl Scouts complete with neck scarf and woggle. It is raining, windy and cold, and I regret not taking my sleeping bag, which Tere assured me would not be needed. It´s full, so instead of sleeping in the monastery with 100 other pilgrims I´m sent to a camp, a dozen shipping containers with bunk beds. The good news is that there is a heater going all night so I´m warm enough.

Outside my first dorm, not the romantic monastery I was looking forward to!

Have a meal with two new friends, and also meet four Spanish girls; it´s a happy and companionable dinner.

My new friends are Pascual, a chatty Spaniard who isn´t bothered by his lack of English or my lack of Spanish, and Nancy, an American woman who reminds me a lot of Barbara. We are a very mixed group, but it´s good to have a friend to look out for one, and someone to share the view with.

Linda, Nancy and Pascual at the start of our Camino.

Off in the morning at 7.30, through a beautiful forest of beech trees. It´s a perfect day and the landscape is beautiful.